


Last Leaf

by sciencemyfiction



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Gen, It's about memory!, M/M, and before Nirai Kanai, but after series 1, child abuse cw, dealing with past emotional trauma cw, gaslighting cw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 23:27:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12851808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencemyfiction/pseuds/sciencemyfiction
Summary: While stopped in Edonis country for a second time, Fai finally remembers something he'd rather have forgotten, and Kurogane has to figure out how to help him work through recovery. Recovery, frankly, sucks. But it's got to happen.





	Last Leaf

Ever since arriving in Edonis country Fai has been in a foul mood, but none of the rest of them can figure out why. Kurogane doesn't understand or like it; in a weird way, coming here feels like they turned back time, undoing all the bonds they've forged since the night he thought Fai and Syaoran had died, slain by that vampire-hunting bastard Seishirou. The park's been mostly repaired, of course, and apparently that virtual reality game is more popular than ever, but who could blame the four of them for refusing a second trip into _that_ world? So they have taken up temporary residence in a bookshop several streets away from the amusement park, nestled not even a kilometer from the ocean shore. The sea sparkles outside their window every morning, and to earn their keep they need only to aid the old woman who lives here in running her shop. It's practically paradise. 

Aside from Fai, fake-smiling his way through each morning's rush of new tourists, and going on long walks alone each evening. 

For the first few days, Kurogane wanted to give him space, of course, give him time to process whatever is going on in his head. Maybe it's thoughts of Sakura, the Sakura-with-whom-they-were-parted; if not it could be remembered agitation from his failed fight with Seishirou; worst case scenario, though, Fai has some new secret and has been returned to that state of helplessness where he feels he must do whatever awful thing it is he's been told to do. It's certainly how he's acting, and Kurogane hates it, hates seeing the painful facade all the more now that he knows what this man looks like when things are _not_ unwell between them. 

Now it's been almost a week. Syaoran and Mokona are aware of the tension, but keep their heads down-- Syaoran because Kurogane asked him to, and Mokona because, she says, Fai does not want her help.

"Is there someone's help he does want?" Kurogane asks, feeling his temper rise at the thought that those sunset walks are to go meet someone else.

It's ugly, jealousy, but having someone he cares about so openly is new and Kurogane is still not graceful about it. He's learning, though. His temper is quelled by the realization that, even if Fai were going to someone else for help, the fact that help was being received would be far more important than who delivered it.

"Mm-mm," Mokona answers in the negative, one ear flopped low, the other raised high as if to listen. "But Mokona still thinks it should be you, Kurogane."

"Why?" Not, of course, that he doesn't want to go, but Kurogane still wants to ask. It seems odd to him. 

"Well, because, it was you in Celes, wasn't it? You stayed awake through the bad magic. You broke it, even."

"The bad magic? What do you mean?" There had been an awful lot of bad magic being cast that day, if Kurogane remembers correctly. Identifying which counts as 'bad' and not would be difficult even if his memory wasn't fuzzy from battle, bloodloss, and his own near death experience. 

Mokona looks troubled, putting her forepaws on Syaoran's shoulder as she leans closer to Kurogane. She's been standing there on the back of his neck for an hour, but Syaoran keeps working at his restoration, ostensibly ignoring them both. His alert posture says he's listening, though, and Kurogane wonders if there may be additional advice coming from that quaerter, too. Hell, at this point he's so worried about the situation he'd gladly accept it.  

"When we arrived on Celes, we went to Castle Ruval. Remember? Fai said Princess Sakura would be there."

"Yeah," Kurogane agrees, furrowing his brow. He does remember that much; what comes after is a little blurrier. "And she was, but with a whole lot of dead bodies in the castle, and that king of his trying to threaten us all. The icicle, you mean? The one that struck me?"

Syaoran's voice is soft, still distracted with his delicate work, but he speaks up to interject on Mokona's behalf, here:

"The memories we saw. It was like a curtain falling down over us all; not just us three, but also Fai-san." 

"Yeah. Mokona saw it hit him; he went all--" Mokona springs up, ears flapping to attention, paws outstretched in a mimicry of stiffening in shock. "And then Mokona couldn't see, only feel the memories and hear them. It was very bad, very powerful. King Ashura...he was so cruel."

As they're describing it, Kurogane does remember, though it was a difficult thing to piece together even with all these clues. Yes, he too saw Fai's back straighten, and then the curious lassitude that fell over his own body as he was dragged unwilling into what had felt like an unending nightmare of pain. Bits and pieces of it stuck in his own memory; mostly Kurogane recalls his reactions to what he'd seen: especially the shame he'd felt, welling up inside his gut like bile. There he'd seen proof positive that more than anyone, Fai knew very well what it was like to endure waiting so endless and pointless that to  _wait_ , back in Tokyo country, must have seemed like an insult. Kurogane mostly remembers the battle, the feeling of Fai's focus shifting as he stopped doing what he was told and started defending them from Ashura. There'd been confusion, yes, a great deal of confusion even before Kurogane slew the king. And after, more confusion, hazy and indistinct. Oh, surely he once had a painfully clear memory of what it felt like to sever his own arm. Now it's just some distant dream, the last dream he ever shared with Princess Tomoyo before she lost her ability to walk that realm and find him. 

He shakes himself, trying to return his focus to the present. 

"So you mean that-- vision, he showed us, right?"

"Yeah," Mokona agrees, paw to her mouth as she thinks it over. "It feels like Fai is trapped in that magic again. Not the same-- not real magic, just a memory-- but it's been worse and worse since we arrived. Kurogane can help. At least, that's what Mokona thinks."

If it's true, if the memory-veil or whatever is haunting Fai again just because they're here, then it explains a great deal about the moodiness Kurogane had noticed, since their arrival. He's not sure how to shatter a magic that isn't actually happening, but that matters less than finding Fai, at this point. Now Kurogane knows it's a problem, so he can do something about it. 

"All right. Hey, make sure he gets dinner," he says to Mokona, pointing to Syaoran. Syaoran is, as expected, engrossed again in his work, and likely will be for hours. 

With a little laugh that lightens some private anxiety in Kurogane's chest, Mokona spins on one paw atop the back of Syaoran's neck, and then hops up onto Syaoran's head. 

"Leave it to Mokona! But try to be back soon. If you're gone all night we'll worry~!"

Kurogane waves that off with a toothy grin, ignoring the implicit double entendre for the moment. This is somewhat time-sensitive, at least insofar as Kurogane doesn't want to let whatever is happening go on for any longer without providing Fai some assistance. As a compromise, he resolves to chase Mokona around once he's back in proper retaliation. 

Edonis country is more like the country of Piffle than Outo, with tall buildings in many colors and a similar plethora of flying vehicles. On the streets, of course, there is a great deal of pedestrian traffic, but most of the people seem to bus from hub location to hub location via flying machines that pick them up at pre-defined stations and move along some arcane chain Kurogane has not bothered trying to memorize. He doesn't know for certain, but he doubts that Fai has gone deeper into the city, or ridden any such series of machines. Part of it is just a hunch, a sensation almost like a hand on his own, tugging him out toward the sea instead. The rest is his own intuition, nothing supernatural about it, telling him that it would be foolish and reckless to go deeper into the city, while Fai can easily find excuses to walk up and down the beachfront, staring out at the ocean, for as many hours or days as he likes, returning every night until whatever it is that's bothering him is finally resolved. 

It feels very wrong, invading the privacy of another person like this when it's to do with such a personal matter, but he trudges downstairs and through the bookshop doggedly. It's not that Kurogane wants to intrude, of course, but he's starting to worry that Fai can't resolve it alone. 

It's not long at all before he finds the mage, curled up into a ball on a rocky outcropping that juts out into the surf, knees to his chin, arms wrapped tight around his knees, and face turned out over the graying horizon with an expression of poignant dismay and uncertainty. He gets no greeting, but Fai makes no effort to flee as Kurogane approaches, at least, nor false cheer to push him away. Kurogane sits down on the rocks beside him, offering a small amount of warmth against the chilly, seasalt night wind. He says nothing, but he puts himself there, and he waits. 

Fai says, after full dark has fallen, 

"How did you find me?"

"The white thing told me something was wrong, and I figured you were here."

"Ah," there's a smile without feeling, in the voice itself. "Mokona's 108 skills. I'd forgotten she could do that."

Whichever skill it is he's referencing, Kurogane's never heard of. Kurogane doesn't say as much, waiting to see where things go from here. 

"...I just...I remembered, you know? Something about him."

"That king?"

"Yeah." Fai pulls in a little tighter around himself, leaning away from Kurogane. "About Ashura."

That's all he says that night, though Kurogane waits with him, patiently, until they're both shivering and miserably cold. Kurogane helps Fai find the way back safely, and makes him bundle up in a warm towel. They lay down to sleep before he hears the soft sound of Fai's voice saying,  _thanks._  

The next day, he finds Fai after sunset, under a pier further down the beachfront, sitting in wet sand and shivering. They don't talk, that night; Kurogane just crouches down, picks him up once he agrees that that's what he wants, and carries Fai back, helping him undress, shower, redress, and get to bed. They hold hands while Fai is sleeping, and that gives Kurogane a little hope, though it's still painful to watch this and know there's nothing, really, that he can do. From then on, at least Fai comes to him before going for his walks, and each night they end up somewhere different when the journey abruptly ends as Fai curls up and just stops. Maybe he should push harder, but Kurogane's not so sure. He feels like, of all things, Fai has been certainly pushed enough in his life before now. So he decides just to be there, only reciprocating when he's asked to do something. Present, easy to reach, but letting the first move come from Fai. 

It's the second week when Fai finally starts talking again, halting words that sound like they tear up his throat, like they rip him up on the way out and leave him bleeding and weary. 

"Ashura had made me forget, for a long, long time," he says, and that much feels like an entire year's worth of suffering, to hear it. Kurogane doesn't know what to say or do to that. He hesitantly lifts one hand, and puts it out toward Fai's shoulder. 

When Fai notices, he leans in to Kurogane's arm, letting himself be pulled close. He pushes his face into Kurogane's chest, to hide, and Kurogane wraps both arms around him, shielding him from the world. They're standing in a little alcove along the boardwalk, but no one is out here right now, at least. Maybe some kind of wetness stains the front of Kurogane's robes, but he doesn't acknowledge it, and Fai doesn't call attention to that either. 

"He told me it was to help me recover, that spell. To search my memories, to show them to him, and understand what happened. To heal. But, any time I displeased him or disagreed with him, he would take me into a private room and say,  _that does not lessen your guilt._ And he would show me a memory. It didn't matter which one; he told me, I was ungrateful, and selfish."

"That's wrong," Kurogane growls, holding Fai a little more closely. "Telling you that is wrong. He was wrong to do those things."

The next words are so faint and shuddering, they almost are inaudible. Kurogane strains with all he is to hear them, so that Fai will not have to repeat himself.

"He would tell me I was kind, as long as I apologized." 

This part, Kurogane does not remember so well about Celes. But when Fai recounts these things, paints the vivid picture of them, Kurogane can imagine it all too well, half-filled-in by the vague, spotty pieces of that day that weren't lost to his own infirmity at the time. There were images, indeed, of a small boy with the same color hair and eyes as Fai, all played parallel to Ashura's terribly calm, sinister voice.  _Be at ease. Those two who travel with you have seen it as well, seen your past._ It was not a kind of weapon Kurogane had been familiar with, precisely, but he had understood these words  _were_ a weapon, a special one forged expressly to shatter Fai's ability to resist, to think. He heard in them the unspoken, ugly things that lay beneath: the implication that, now that Kurogane and Syaoran and Mokona knew of what had happened, of what Fai had 'done' in order to escape his prison, they would surely abandon him. The thought that such words had often been forged to wound Fai anew is a twisting one, leaves Kurogane's stomach unsettled and his heart ill-at-ease. 

And he still doesn't know what to do, what to say. He despairs at the thought that these old wounds, these injuries of the soul will go unmended, all because Fai was unlucky enough to put his faith and trust in someone like Kurogane who doesn't know what to do with them. 

"You  _are_ kind," he insists, but feels the tension go tight through Fai's body against him, and presses an absent-minded kiss to the top of Fai's head instead, growling at himself for being so useless. "I-- do you want me to do anything? Say anything? What do you need to do?"

Talking is not, has never been, Kurogane's strong point. He is doing his best, here. So, it's a relief, even if he feels a little cowardly, when he gets an answer. 

It's not what he'd expected. Then again, nothing ever is, where Fai is concerned. 

"I need to get..." the words come slowly, still, as painful as the story was. "I need to remember that you...still are here. You and Mokona and Syaoran-kun."

It seems counter to all logic, that in order to remind himself of their continued presence, Fai has been coming out here to the shadows and hurting in silence every night. In a way, though, Kurogane thinks he maybe understands. It's not there in the exact words stated, but Fai has told him all he needs to know, before. Maybe the person they saw in those memories burned with the fierce heart of a child determined to save his people, himself, his world; but time had melted away in that place, and it was such a long time that Kurogane can't even conceive of it. In the end, despite the lengths he was willing to go to, that child had had to wait, alone and suffering, until someone came to get him. 

So Fai can't  _put_ himself where he should be, because his mind is sticking itself in his past, all jumbled up with Ashura and that desolate, icy hellscape. 

"Okay," says Kurogane, and pulls back, putting his hands up so he can cup either side of Fai's face, palms over Fai's cheeks. Just a bit, he's self-conscious about the mechanical one, even with the artificial skin; but Fai looks up at him wonderingly, blue eyes lost and hungry, and Kurogane chides himself for even thinking about that right now. "I came to get you, mage. Come back home with me."

He sees the way the tension unfurls around the air itself that Fai was cloaked in, feels the breath that stabs into Fai's lungs, sharp as a spear. Kurogane only hopes he hasn't injured where he meant to heal, yet again. He has always, always found this difficult, and the stakes are never less than this, but he hopes this time he's at least read the situation right. 

Fai doesn't have a smile that day, but he nods, face streaked with tears, frozen in numb disbelief. He accepts Kurogane's leading hand, and follows him right back to the shop, where Syaoran and Mokona greet them and help Kurogane to bundle Fai up. They all sit together on the big soft sofa in the middle of their room, and Syaoran and Mokona play another kind of virtual reality game than the one they saw before, while Kurogane watches and Fai lightly dozes, slipping away into an exhausted, grateful sleep. The next day, they go about business as usual; but the tension is less, and when Fai needs to go outside, Kurogane follows him, lets him lead all the way to a dock two hours' walk up the coast, where an abandoned ship is moldering at port, its anchor keeping it from escaping, its buoyancy still enough to keep it from sinking. When Fai is done walking, Kurogane does like he'd done the night before, this time taking Fai's hand. 

"Hey. I came here to get you. Come back home with me."

It's not as big a shock this time but it's still magic, for Fai: that much is obvious. While Kurogane is left in wonder when Fai does a complicated spell to animate a book, for example, making it run around like a puppy and dispense information from within its pages on request-- well, this is apparently like a miracle. Fai's eyes this second time are still round and disbelieving, glassy with tears he doesn't even seem to realize are coming. By the time Kurogane's led them back, Syaoran and Mokona are ready for them with a full spread for dinner, a blanket for Fai. They bundle Fai up and Syaoran reads aloud until he passes out into his own book, Mokona resting in Fai's lap while Kurogane watches over all three of them. The third day, Fai smiles wetly when Kurogane tells him that Kurogane has come to collect him, and nods. 

By the end of the month, Fai is able to go back smiling, cook dinner, and sing songs with Mokona while they drink with Syaoran afterward. It doesn't make sense, not to Kurogane, but it matters to Fai, so he does it without question, because it seems to help and it's something Kurogane  _can_ do, even if talking still isn't really his strong point. That night, Fai is still up when they put Syaoran and Mokona to bed. Maybe tipsy, sure, but tipsy-for-real Fai is much less annoying than tipsy-by-video-game-rules Fai. Handsy, though. He sits in Kurogane's lap and kisses Kurogane full on the lips, and it's not the very first time they've done something like this but it's the first time in a long time. Kurogane savors it, just holding Fai and knowing that Fai will be here in the morning. 

"I'm really glad you're here," he says, simply, because he'd have left it at a thought but he's learning that Fai sometimes benefits from words, more than thoughts alone. 

"You aren't always," is the answer he gets.

Fai bites Kurogane's ear, and Kurogane hisses, pushing him back a little until he lets go. Not while they're not sober, he doesn't want to do that; and not while he's still not sure if Fai is feeling better. He has to hope that, at least someday, Fai will be able to feel better. Even if the idea will never be one Fai accepts, Kurogane believes in him and in how much he deserves to feel happiness. They were doing all right for a while before this happened, pretty happy together, just the four of them. At the very least, Kurogane wants to reclaim that feeling for them if they can. 

So he answers,

"You don't think so, but I am. I'm always glad you're here. So...I'll always try to be there to come get you. If you want me to, or need me to."

Stilling where he sits in Kurogane's lap, Fai leans forward now, resting his forehead against Kurogane's forehead. They sit together in a peaceful silence, and simply exist. 

Fai sighs, pulling back and standing up. He holds out his hand to Kurogane, and leads him to bed. It's warmer to sleep curled up with each other, bundled close under the sheets. It messes up Kurogane's sleeping position a little, having Fai draped face-down over him like a gangly too-many-limbed blanket, but he doesn't complain. It's nice together. Fai's breath on his shoulder is a constant, gentle reminder that Fai is alive, that he breathes, that he is safe. 

And something Kurogane had forgotten was wrapped around his heart uncoils, just a little, just enough to let his arm wrap around Fai's waist as Fai is drifting off to sleep. Kurogane blinks his eyes clear, feels the wetness he dislodged streak across his face and into his ear, and that's why he doesn't like  _sleeping on his back_ but the fact that he can think such a petty complaint makes him feel completely relaxed for the first time since they came back here. 

In short order, Kurogane finds himself drifting off, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> As I wrote the summary I realized this is a companion piece to that other thing I wrote earlier. Oops. Anyway, having dealt more with my own mental health since the olden days, I think Fai's recovery might be a little like this. There's a difference between feeling trapped by the offer of support (when it has strings) and feeling freed by it. I like to think that Kurogane understands, by the end of Nihon, how to offer the kind of support that helps Fai be free. I really love that they ended up together and happy in canon and wanted to write a part of that road. 
> 
> Title is a reference to the [ same-named song (by OK, GO)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkYfB1C0Zgc)


End file.
